By Chris Dougherty
Chris Dougherty is a certified RV technician. Here is an article he penned while he was serving as RVtravel.com’s technical editor.
I don’t know about you, but one of the setup chores I don’t really like to do is setting the scissor jacks — especially in the rain, or putting them back up when it’s raining and muddy with pine needles sticking to everything. Now, there’s nothing you can do to fix the problem of messy jack pads, but crouching down and manually cranking them up and down can be a thing of the past with this tool.
Several companies make adapters for scissor jacks that allow you to use your drill to raise and lower them — they are Camco, Atwood, Ultra-Fab and Liftco.
These adapters include the 3/4-inch hex drive jacks, the T-slot style jacks, and the J-hook style jacks. Most of these are available from Amazon or your favorite RV retailer. Simply insert the bit into your 3/8-inch or 1/2-inch battery-powered drill (with a full charge) and away you go!
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I hate the sound of someone “drilling” their jacks down. I am one of the “old folks” who still crank their supports down by hand. Always have; always will…until I get too old to bend over anymore. THEN, I might resort to the drill technique.
As they say, work smarter, not harder.
Gee, I just went to Home Depot and purchased the parts. My little 18 volt cordless drill does just fine.
I find a cheap Harbor Freight 1/2″ impact driver works great.. yes it is a little noisy but that only lasts for a min or 2 (and NEVER if arriving late at night)
I used to laugh at the ‘old folks’ who used a drill to crank down their jacks. I would just hand crank mine down.
Fast forward 20 years and now I’M an ‘old folk’. I use my drill religiously now. Ha.